US wants full break-up of Khan nuclear network

ISLAMABAD, Friday (Reuters) - A clandestine network run by the disgraced father of Pakistan's atomic bomb and used to supply nuclear technology abroad must be completely destroyed, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

"It is a network that we want to make certain that its tentacles are broken up as well, and so we have cooperation with a number of countries on that front," she told a news conference in Islamabad.

"I don't think there is any doubt that A.Q. Khan represented a threat, not just to the United States, but to Pakistan, to the region, to the international community as a whole," she said.

Pakistan first successfully tested a nuclear weapon in 1998 and Khan admitted last year to using a clandestine procurement network to supply Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear technology.

"We have had cooperation with Pakistan to try and make sure that the A.Q. Khan network is broken up, to get as much information as is possible," Rice said.

"But I do not doubt that we all have an interest in knowing what happened, that we all have an interest in making sure that this network cannot, does not, continue to operate in any way.

"And perhaps, most importantly, we all have an interest in knowing how it happened so that we can safeguard against this kind of blackmarket entrepreneurship in the future," she said.